Christian Zionism – There is no such thing

Proof the President is Gay

If you call it “Zionism,” it is not Christian. Period.

It is a strange belief that would better be called “Christian Darbyism.”

It was made up through a torturous reading by John Darby (a lawyer, not a Biblical scholar or theologian) of certain Biblical passages that have nothing to do with each other. His compilation has nothing to do with the message of the Bible.

[Note: I am not writing about Jewish Zionism. I have no standing to do that.][Note 2: if you want to read a scholarly and reasoned and generous explanation of this topic instead of my rash and hot-headed and unkind explanation, please read the Rev. Robert O. Smith’s article HERE rather than continuing with my tirade.]

Darbyism is one of the predominant beliefs of Southern Baptists and other so-called “Evangelicals,” most of whom would adamantly and vehemently browbeat you into accepting that their belief systems is based 100% on the Bible. However, if a so-called Christian begins talking to you about the “rapture” pre-or-post-millennialism, or about the “dispensation,” you can assume that what he or she really believes is a theology of “last things” made up—invented—fabricated “from whole cloth” by John Darby in the early 19th century. It makes as much sense as believing that a picture of President George W. Bush following a custom of the King of Saudi Arabia proves that he’s gay.

Nowhere in the Bible is the “theology” of last things as invented by John Nelson Darby (18 November 1800 – 29 April 1882) present. Pat Robertson and John Hagee notwithstanding, the theology is, in fact, anti-Christian.

There. I have said what I think as unkindly and brutally as I dare. I’m sure I’ve offended my Southern Baptist Friends and Relatives. My adamant statement is, of course, no better for fostering discussion than John Hagee’s nonsense. I’m sorry. I’m not terribly rational in the face of total irrationality and idiocy.

It’s up to John Hagee, not God, to make this happen.

The problem is that so many Americans believe in the heresy that it shapes American foreign policy regarding Israel and the entire Mideast. The State of Israel was founded not because of Jewish Zionism but because of British so-called “Christian Zionism” that grew from the bizarre teachings of John Darby to create the Balfour Declaration. Arthur James Balfour was a Darbyite, having been raised in a British “Evangelical” home. He was

Probably the most significant British politician of all, however, [and] pioneered the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Like Lloyd George, Balfour had been brought up in an evangelical home and was sympathetic to Zionism because of the influence of dispensational teaching. He regarded history as ‘an instrument for carrying out a Divine purpose.’

This is taken from “The Road to Balfour: The History of Christian Zionism,” by Steven Sizer. Sizer is a British Evangelical Christian who believes that

So why am I writing (SCREAMING?) about this? Simply to say that, because so many Darbyites belong to the fundamentalist churches in the United States, and they are sovocal and so powerful, there is little or no hope that there will ever be an end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel or a “solution” to the international disaster of the Palestine/Israel conflagration until and unless John Darby’s prophecies come true. And it’s time for people who do not base their world view on John Darby’s writings to begin to speak up –TO SHOUT!

I’m sorry to be as offensive as I believe the Darbyites to be. I ask your forgiveness. I will search for a way to arrange my time to do real research and write so that my presentation(s) in the future will be rational.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they hall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. . . Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. . . Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Responses

Christian Zionism did precede Jewish Zionism but by three centuries, starting in Britain under the Puritans, according to Israeli historian Shlomo Sand. It was conveniently adopted in the 19th century by some secular Jewish intellectuals in Western Europe, he maintains, when statehood for individual “peoples” or ethnic groups, as we would say, became all the rage, dovetailing with increasing anti-Jewish feeling in Europe (the term “anti-Semitism” dates from 1882) ironically just a few decades after Jewish liberation from civil restrictions they had been under for centuries.

British PMs in the 19th and early 20th centuries carried on the belief, entirely out of Christian religious belief about the so-called End Times, in a Jewish homeland right up to and through Balfour–Anglican PMs–although Uganda and South America were also possible sites for it before the fall of the Ottoman empire. Which is not to say they felt kindly toward Jews. They wanted them in a homeland for reasons of their own theology but they also didn’t want them streaming into Britain in great numbers (nor did the US, for that matter; if we didn’t restrict their entry after 1924, along with Asians and other “inferior” peoples, who knows how many would have escaped Hitler)?